Until this week I've only known the name Boro in connection with my adopted town, a football club, a cab firm and a long-lost chippie on Linthorpe Road.

But now, wonder of wonders, I am in a position to tell the world that we are not alone.

Did you know that there is a Boro Land?

And that there is a Boro language?

It seems that the Boro people are a long suppressed racial minority living in a thin, narrow belt of land on the Himalayan foothills of North East India.

There are four million of the Boro people, and a new book has just arrived which deals with their language.

It seems that this language, like our very own Cornish and Manx, is under threat, and the linguistic equivalent of a Red Cross mercy mission is now underway to save the language for posterity.

Linguists rhapsodise about the structure of the Boro language, which they describe as one of the most beautiful in the world.

It has the knack of reducing, what, in English, would be long and complicated sentences, into single words - words that sum up all the dilemmas of human existence. What can be more evocative that the word "asusu" which translates as "to feel unknown and uneasy in a new place", or "gobray" which means to "fall into a well unknowingly", or, and most poignant of all, "onsay" which means "to pretend to love".

There do not appear to be many words that could unite Teesside and Boro Land - although "zogno" which means the "sound produced by a mixing of mud and water from a hand thrust into a crab's hole" might strike a distant chord with some of Redcar's older fisherfolk.

However, I feel it is our duty to come to the aid of our Himalayan namesakes.

What better than discussing with them whether they have words or phrases that can pithily sum up the human condition as we daily experience it here on Teesside.

Could there be a single word, for instance, that simply encapsulates the uneasy mixture of rage and boredom that follows yet another 0-0 draw at a wet Riverside Stadium?

Or the distinct feeling - but without any supporting physical evidence - that there is going to be trouble in this pub tonight?

Could there be a word or phrase that sums up the absolute certainty that there will be a convoy of JCBs cruising sedately down the A66 at 15mph in the middle of the morning rush hour?

One is a liking for alcohol - in our case, an odd mixture of WKD and Bass - and, in their case, a very strong rice beer called Jumai.

What better twinning arrangement, could I suggest, than an invitation to a sit-down lunch of Parmo and a generous ration of Jumai to see how the languages of our two societies could come to each other's mutual aid?

It could be the beginning of something very big indeed.

It might be nothing less than the first tentative flowering of an entirely new world language.